


I Love You Prompts: Tiny Fics

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 04:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18513925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: A series of small stories from a list of 'I love you' prompts.





	1. In a blissful sigh as you fall asleep.

He said it once before, waking with a body full of drugs and a head full of dreams. He talked about the war and a liner and a woman who saved the world. A woman he claimed he kissed. A woman he said was her. He made no sense but he believed. He truly believed. 

 

Now, his shoulder in a sling and the confusion of a case and a real kiss behind them, his smile is fading from his lips as he slips into sleep. There’s a soft pop as he pulls his head to hers and whispers “I love you” in a blissful sigh. 

This time she believes. She truly believes.


	2. With a hoarse voice, under the blankets

The world is so white with cold it hurts. Not just his eyes but his skin, his muscles, his bones; his bones ache. He understands that description now. Feels it. Somehow they make it to the Snocat. Images of the craft float past his mind’s eye, setting off a tingling in his veins. He warmed briefly at the memory. Was it real? It was real. It had to be. There were aliens tearing at his feet. Screeching. His heart beats quicker and as he pulls Scully into the cab he feels his fingertips for the first time in hours. He hunkers down in the seat and bundles blankets around Scully and himself. Did she see it? She’d smiled at him, a weak, watery smile. Her whispered confirmation had given him permission to give in to the fatigue. But in his frozen state now he’s not sure if she said anything at all, saw anything. 

In the Snocat, her face is as pale as the backdrop, save for the pink tip of her nose. She’s shivering. He pulls the blanket tighter round her so that her hair is completely hidden. She sniffs.

“Thank you,” she says and her voice is cracked like the ice.

He doesn’t know what to say. She would have done the same for him. Had done the same. Their rescues of each other are becoming more epic by the year. He chuffs out a laugh at the thought but it gets stuck in the frozen air.

“What?” she asks, breathing into her cupped hands.

“Nothing,” he says, “I’m just glad you’re okay.” He lays his hands in her lap and she separates her legs enough for them to slip between her thighs. She clamps them together and he nods at the gesture.

“You saved me, Mulder. You…I…that place…”

That place, his hallway. She saved him. He saved her. Even. He closes his eyes. He’d been about to show her how he felt about her, kiss her, make love to her, hold her so tight she couldn’t leave him.

“What do you remember, Scully?”

She blinks. “Your apartment, the hard floor against my shoulder blades, the cold, so noisy.” She swallows, looks down. “I was quitting.”

“Yes,” he breathes. It makes him tired all over again.

“But you saved me,” she says and her eyes widen at the sudden familiarity of the phrase. “We kissed.” Not quite, he thinks, pushing his hands further into the nest of her thighs. She takes in a quick, sharp breath. “Did we kiss?”

“There was a bee.” It sounds like the worst excuse. 

“Yes,” she says and he can’t tell if she’s shivering or laughing. Either way it’s shock. He knows it’s shock. She starts to cough and he pulls his hands free to huddle her closer to him. “Mulder,” she says from somewhere in her burrow. He looks down at her, the top of her blanketed head. Strains to hear what she wants to say. The rush of the coarse fabric against his own ears is like the craft taking off. Filling his hearing. He’s not sure, can’t quite distinguish the words, but it sounds very much like she said “I love you” and he wants to give in to the fatigue again.


	3. In awe, the first time you realised it…

The guilt had you crushed. Under its burden you sunk to the chair and when you touched her, you felt cold fear ice your veins. This was all your fault. Perhaps it’s best if you left her to die. She would remain forever innocent, like your sister. You could wear Scully’s attempts at providing you with the credence you didn’t realise you wanted as a hair shirt, a torturous reminder of your failure.

 

Melissa knew the truth. You were frightened. Not of death. No, that’s easy to deal with, you’ve been doing it for so long, after all. You were frightened of yourself. Of what it would mean should she live. Your guilt had crushed you but your love had shattered you and all that you thought you were.

 

Someone told you once that when it came down to it, everybody dies alone. You can be surrounded by people but you cross the bridge by yourself. But at the moment you picked up her hand and told her you wanted her to live, you realised it wasn’t true. People can be bound in invisible ways.

 

“I love you,” you said. Not in as many words, but in a way that meant something more than the sum of those words. It was a shock to discover it. It may have been too late, but as you sat with her, you felt it.

 

If crossing the bridge was her destination you were ready. But if she turned around and came back to you, you needed her to know you’d be waiting. 

 

“I don’t know if my being here…will help bring you back. But I’m here.”


	4. As an apology...

You are curled on your side, a comma, a pause in a sentence. But what more can you tell me that your charts haven’t already? There is no full stop yet. No empty next paragraph. That chapter is yet to come.

You smile, you accept my futile murmurings with such grace, you think up devious plots to bear my burden, mine; as though the Catholic in you might be a worthier killer.

You are holy, though. You make me believe. You are an angel. And as you stretch your weakened arms around my neck, a rosary for my sins, you let me whisper, “I love you, I love you, I love you” a hundred times.


End file.
